Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

I have one problem left and I’m leaving it in, for my lovely beta readers to weigh in on directly. Partially because I did not want to say there were no problems left. Because there undoubtedly will be: the ones I can’t see.

I felt it, at the end of this process, how snowblind I am to the wrong shapes that may exist in the blizzard of words I created. Have I organized the chaos well, or poorly? I’m too deep into the storm of words to know. I think I’ve done a good job, but genuinely can’t tell at this time. This is why writers are advised to step back and leave a text for 6 months, so they can re-engage with a modicum of objectivity. That’s not my jam this time around. I’m on a mission, so will let others be my distance, rather than time. (The Sabbath song is about cocaine, I believe, but I’m linking it anyway, despite my alternative meaning, because every time I use the words snow blind I hear the words “lying snowblind in the sun” in my head, and thought I’d share that moment with you.) And in recognizing my uncertainty, I am more comfortable than ever before with it. Strange thing to admit for a self-confessed control freak (last blog), but it’s true.

I have accepted that I have done what I can. This is liberating. I set myself problems in the text, I feel I have come up with solutions, but will what works for me work for others? Dunno. I think part of this is the subject itself, dealing with faith and doubt, ego and surrender, love and divided loyalties, how any of us, all of us, seek to square those circles. There is no easy answer, so of course I am left feeling something is hanging there, both invisible and just out of reach. Doubly ungraspable, but still yearned for. To me, that is a core part of the creative experience, reaching for what you cannot quite see, unsure of what you might touch if you manage to grasp it. If you don’t push yourself you’re just generating content, and soon there will be machines for that.

I’m not going down that road this week. Other than to say I am calm in the face of generative AI, when not ranting. It is already an unavoidable reality to be dealt with, one that will become ever more obvious. Rage is not the answer, though it is tempting. Artists in every media are going to have to keep finding roads AI cannot follow, for now at least, and find meaning there.

So, for this week, the book is done. How many times is a book done? First draft done. Developmental edit done. Rewrites done. Beta readers feedback adjustments done. Line edit done. Copy edit done. Proofing done. Formatting check done. Then publication, and a friend points out something you screwed up. Friends like that are gold in self-publishing, because you can go fix what was broken right there and then. I am very grateful for them. But anyway, that is a lot of dones. This is why as a writer I get occasionally leery of updating coworkers, because the process is a continuous sequence of “I’m almost finished with X. Finished X. I’m almost finished with Y. Finished Y!” And it goes on for however many steps there are until publication, which can be a lot. They stop caring pretty quickly. So they stop asking. I update them anyway! I just say the words to them now to please myself, hahahaha! (Yes, I may be an, or the, office bore. Someone has to do it, and I have shouldered that responsibility.)

But here I am, another important landmark reached. Another mountain climbed, only to turn into a hill, (did a blog around that Dio song forever ago), more mountains ahead before publication. But it is indubitably closer. Hoorah! Hurray! Hurrah! Hooray! Callooh! Callay! I may permit myself a chortle.